The core of LastLeaf’s business is silk-screen printing, with an emphasis on concert posters.

Valdez designs most of the posters himself, prints them, then ships them to be displayed and sold at concerts, movie theaters or wherever his clients see fit to use them.

“My true love is rock poster art so I do gig posters for bands all over the world for shows and tours,” Valdez said. “I do them for tons of different genres of music and big names and little names alike. I’ve worked for everyone from the Alabama Shakes to Bruce Springsteen.”

The other part of LastLeaf’s business is commercial screen printing, which is where Valdez was afforded the chance to work for Springsteen and the “Family Guy” show.

A printing company called Print Mafia was making the posters for a Springsteen show but didn’t have the capability to print the posters in the size needed, so Valdez stepped in and got them printed and shipped off in the correct size.

The management team behind “Family Guy” asked Valdez if LastLeaf could print out posters that had already been designed for a “Star Wars” themed episode.

“There’s got to be less than 50 studios in the United States that do this and not many outside of the country, so we do a ton of silk-screen printing for different artists and that has led to getting to do a lot of fun stuff like film posters, TV shows and working for comic book companies,” Valdez said.

The beginning

Valdez said he never necessarily set out to do what he’s doing.

LastLeaf’s doors were opened in 2010 after Valdez got done being in a band and working next door at The Daily Grind.

Being in that band, called Son of Man, in which Valdez played electric guitar, was what initially led him to become a printmaker.

“It was one of those things where we as a band decided early on that we didn’t want to pay people to make our merchandise for us,” Valdez said. “So we resolved to learn how to make our own merchandise. At that point it was T-shirts and it was a couple of us sitting at a dining room table with one dude holding the screen and we’d pull shirts on our table before I knew anything about photo printing that I do now.

“But that’s what really got me into printmaking and it really blossomed out. I never intended to do what I’m doing now but like any other business, you just go in the direction it takes you and this is where it’s taken me.”

Valdez said he was in Son of Man for about eight years and has been in bands since he was 16 or 17 years old.

“It turned into a point for me where there’s more money working for bands than there is being in a band,” Valdez said. “It’s hard to support a family doing that. We all had jobs on the side.”

Valdez said he quit the band and his job at The Daily Grind to start LastLeaf, opening up the business right next door.

“It was a happy, unintentional thing because they still supply my coffee,” Valdez quipped.

Designing

Valdez creates the vast majority of the posters at his shop.

“Generally speaking, anything you see on the walls is all my own designs,” he said. “Bands hire me to come up with a design and I come up with it and it has to be approved by the band. You design it, get it approved, then it goes into a contract thing where you ask how many they want, tell them the price per unit, and send them off to the concert, and they’re sold as merchandise at the concert.”

Valdez said he gets 15 to 20 percent of the overage prints to sell himself.

“So say they order 100 and we print 120 and keep the 20 for myself and my own sales,” he said. “A lot of times the band will get on social media and tell people where to get the posters for the shows. We have a little shipping station here. We ship all over.”

Despite his poster designs and the obvious clamor for them, Valdez said he doesn’t like being called an artist.

“I’m a printmaker and designer, I’m a rock poster artist, I guess. I don’t know which way to put it,” Valdez said. “It’s just, being in the industry I’m in, seeing some of the stuff that gets put out, it’s kind of shameful to call myself an artist on that level. The other reason I don’t like it is I feel the word artist sounds pretentious and I don’t like to come off like that because it sounds egotistical and pretentious and I want to keep out of that vein of people.”

Not playing favorites

Valdez loves his work so much — and the bands, studios and management companies he’s worked for — that it’s impossible for him to choose a favorite project or client.

“Getting to work for bands like the Avett Brothers and Alabama Shakes is great and getting to work for some of those more classic bands like Mudhoney and the Melvins is really awesome,” Valdez said. “A lot of the film poster work is really cool, too. I can’t single out anything that’s like, ‘this is my favorite piece,’ because I think being in any creative industry, once you do something that’s awesome and you move on to the next thing and the next thing, and by the time you look back on something you do four years ago you’re like, ‘that was rubbish.’ ”

Challenges

LastLeaf is basically a one-man operation with Valdez running the show full time.

“I’m here anywhere from 12 to 14 hours a day or more and I work six, maybe seven days a week sometimes so it’s hard to keep up with everything because it’s just me,” Valdez said. “Now that I’ve got my (teenage) son working with me a little it’s become a little easier.”

Valdez said he also has an unpaid assistant who’s currently on medical leave who helps him handle the logistics of the business.

“You’d be surprised, with the high profile stuff we do, there’s still not a dramatic amount of money in this industry, you know? It’s not like we’re banking over here. I do this because I love it and it affords me to pay the bills and mortgage but beyond that, it’s a labor of love really.”

Like with most businesses, the feast or famine nature of LastLeaf also can be a little challenging.

“You never know when stuff is going to come in,” he said. “Generally speaking we have a steady stream of stuff but there’s always times where you’re just waiting on that next check. Sometimes you really miss a steady paycheck and knowing the amount of money you’re making at the end of the month. You can have nothing and go up to more than you expect in a couple of hours, but that interim is kind of tough sometimes.”

Striving for perfection

Valdez takes a great amount of pride in his work and won’t ship stuff unless he’s completely happy with it.

“I’m very particular about what goes out,” he said. “If I don’t like it, it gets remade; if I don’t like it, it doesn’t go out to the client unless I’m 100 percent on it. So things take me a little longer to do than some other print shops that have four or five employees working for them that just bust out prints not caring whether it’s good or bad, though 99 percent of the time it is great.

“Everything is personally looked over by me and if it’s not up to my expectations it doesn’t go out; it gets remade, it gets fixed. Screen printing is a flawed medium; it’s handmade, none of this stuff gets printed on computers. So the intent is for it to be made by hand but even though that sort of openness of having those minor flaws is expected, I try and make it as perfect as possible because I want my work to show that it’s cared for.”

Valdez said he’s still striving to get even better at his craft.

He said one of his dream clients to work with is Jack White.

“I’ve always been into his music as a solo artist and with the White Stripes,” he said. “It’d be cool to work for someone like that.”